yeah, I'm going to be making payments on this christmas until next christmas.

so I was in north carolina. it's where my parents moved when I went to college. I was born in south carolina, not far from where they live now, but we moved to philadelphia when I was but a wee bairn. southerners taught me how to talk, and whenever I spend a couple of days in the south, my accent comes back. thuaynk yeeeeeoou! normally my accent is sort of a touch of philly, if that sounds like anything.

if you're ever in the southeast and see or hear something about "southern pat," the phrase refers to pimento cheese. it's mayo, cheddar, and diced pimentos and it's fucking good. don't knock it till you've tried it, and don't ever buy it from a grocery store. you can trust me because I hate mayonnaise.

some of the stereotypes about the south are true. it's full of racists. a relatively innocent story that starts out "my grandmother's cook was part of the black northward migration..." immediately degenerates into a hilarious misunderstanding ("I thought you said your grandmother was part of the black migration!") which they only find funny because it's such a horrible idea ("har har! it's all right, everyone's got a skeleton in the closet!"), the story teller jokingly threatens to kick the listener's ass for even suggesting such a thing, and it all winds up with a joke about "a coon in every tree in south carolina."

and these weren't rednecks, either. the listener was a sucessful and talented architect. he was smart, educated, witty, a damn fine piano player in his spare time. the teller was my dad. also educated, intelligent, a man of very refined tastes, and as kind a man as you could ever want to meet... but southern to the core. it becomes easier to understand how he can tolerate some of his clients, like the elegant older lady who refers to college football as "your darkies versus our darkies." and now it's obvious why my parents flipped out when I dated a black girl, and why my mother, who can seemingly remember the name, birthplace, and economic status of every female I've ever talked to, can't remember that the girl's name was latoya and not toyota.

it's so casual, they don't think about it. it's as natural to them as liking chicken or hating the smell of cigars. they don't hate black people, they wouldn't hurt anyone, and most of them would be just as warm and friendly to a black person as a white person, but they wouldn't be friends with black people, they wouldn't dream of inviting a black family over for dinner, and they would vote segregationist if they had a chance. and the offhand, innocent racism of the general south provides a comfortable nurturing environment for the minority of real wackos, the rednecks and the KKK types who are dangerous.

don't get me wrong... all southerners are not racist. if you go down there and you assume that everyone you happen to talk to is two beers away from busting out with a coon joke, you're a prejudiced fool. but you shouldn't be suprised, either. what may be a nasty little secret in baltimore is just laughs between friends in charleston.

charleston, by the way, is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. the beaches in that area are my favorite anywhere.

my flights sucked. both there and back I had little kids behind me screaming and kicking my seat for 3 hours. lame.

on my way home I was looking out the window and I wondered why you never see car wrecks as you're taking off. cars are way more dangerous than planes, and you can see about a thousand of them driving around down there, and isn't anyone watching the plane take off? it's ok, they're all toys from that height anyway.

I was looking at those little tiny trucks and having a hard time imagining that something so small could actually hurt me. then I started thinking that maybe god is just some guy, right, only he's really huge. brain ability goes up as brain size goes up, so who knows what you could do if you had a brain the size of a planet? you couldn't get run over by a truck, that's for sure.

that made me think of a great story I'm never going to write. it's about a mad scientist who wants to rule the world, see? he figures out how to grow his brain and expand its function and all that, and becomes smarter than any human could ever be. he's got, like, the big glass dome skull so you can see his brain throbbing and everything. so he runs a couple of test crimes, and gets completley shot down. he can't get away with shit. he figures out that the problem is pride. he's smarter than everyone else, but he's so well aware of how fucking great he is that he underestimates everyone else. so he gets to work and fucking surgically removes all the pride from his own brain. or maybe he builds a robot to do it, I dunno. so then as soon as he removes his own pride-- here's the kicker dude-- he doesn't want to rule the world anymore. he dedicates the rest of his life to helping people. the end.

oh, but in the sequel I'm never going to write to the story I'm never going to write all the people of earth are like "yo dude! cure our diseases!" and he's all like "yeah, ok." so he goes into his lab and immediately starts to work on awesome space travel plans. the people are all "dude, your space plans are awesome, but uh, what about those diseases?" then the scientist is like "woah, settle down. you think diseases are bad, wait till every child born on this planet lives to 120 years old. where's all that food going to come from? where's all their poopie gonna go? soon as we colonise some planets and shit, then we can all start fucking like healthy, healthy bunnies."

and then he, like, snapped and blew all their shit up anyway. maybe not.

anyhoo, that's where I've been for the past week, and now I'm about to go away again for a little while. you see, I'm moving to a new apartment, and I don't know how long it'll be till I can rock the internet again. the computer will be the last thing I unplug, cause I'm addicted like that, but I'll be away for a few days. LUCKY YOU EXTRA LONG TURIN JOURNAL HAPPY HAPPY TODAY!!

happy new year, you bunch of fucking lushes. woah! easy on the champagne there, 12-step. I hope those of you who actually are recovered alcoholics aren't pissed at me now.

circumstances and celebrations mean you folks get a rock and roll twofer. track #6 on turin's never ending mix tape is another frank black ass kicker, whiskey in your shoes. it's way better than the first fb track I put up. track #7 is called then comes dudley. it's by the jesus lizard.

SGColorado bowling was a lot of fun. We ended up coming back to my apartment and drank and hung out for a while. A couple of the denver folk crashed on the floor, and then we ate at Dot's the next morning.